G A M E S

i s i t a b o o k ?

Games to Help you stray from the Straight and Narrrow.

"Why is the alphabet in that order? Is it because of that song?"

- Steven Wright

Playing . . .

What follows is a collection of generative devices to use for writing which is not narrative
based. The arbitrary rules of these games have also been used by serious writers to produce ideas for
poems and stories - some examples are given below. The rules of many of these creative
games can be translated into computer code to produce what might be called para-literature.
These games are fun - try them.

Playing with the Alphabet . . .

A busied effigy,
A shy joy-ache, elemental
Pique, yours to feed,
A blue ex-you I see...

- Dennis Des Chenes

Anagrams . . .

Most people think of anagrams as frivolous fun. But they have been used for
serious purposes. Here is a short religious poem by the seventeenth-century poet
George Herbert
inspired by an anagram.

Ana-{Mary}gram
Army

How well her name an Army doth present,
In which the Lord of Hosts did pitch his tent!

Below is an interesting variation on the anagram, an acrostic
chronogram from the title page of a book printed in 1652:

franCIs goLDsMIth

The date in roman numerals (MDCLII) is hidden within the author's name.

We got the words for our nonlinearity anagram poems
from a wonderful anagram
generator

Palindromes . . .

Palindromes are sentences or lines that read the same forward and backward.
In 1980, David Stephens wrote a 58,000 letter palindrome "Satire: Veritas."
Lawrence Levine wrote a palindromic novel of 31,957 words, Dr. Awkward and
Olson in Oslo in 1986. "In Eden, I," a poem by Richard Cox published in
Word ways takes the traditional 'Madam, I'm Adam' palindrome further.
Each line reads the same forward and backwards. Here are some excerpts:

This goes beyond a clever trick to become real poetry. Some lines have an
almost Miltonic meter: "Even in Eden I win Eden in Eve"

Writing ordinary words in reverse order can completely change their
significance. To the right is a comical letter from Lewis Carroll to a young friend.

Jonathan Swift wrote this pseudo-Latin in a letter to Richard Brinsley
Sheridan:

Mi sana. Odioso ni mus rem. Moto ima os illud dama nam?

It is really reverse English: I'm an ass. O so I do in summer. O Tom,
am I so dull, I a mad man?

Lipograms . . .

Interesting ideas can be generated by prohibiting a particular letter
from being used in a work. This is called a 'lipogram.' The first lipogram
book in English was Gadsby written by Ernest Vincent Wright in 1939.
Georges Perec of the Oulipo group wrote the lipogram novel A void
which tells a story in 200 pages without using the letter 'e.' For a humorous
example, read "Mary Had a Lipogram" reprinted in Making the alphabet dance
by Ross Eckler.

Playing with sounds . . .

To ridicule the nonsensical rules of English pronunciation, George Bernard Shaw
demonstrated that the word fish can logically be spelled ghoti:

gh as in laugho as in womenti as in nation

Homophonic translation means translating not the sense but the
sounds from one language to another, or even within the same language.
The Oulipo group play this game as well. Ladle Rat Rotten Hut, a
small book put out by Swamp Press in Massachusetts, contains text which looks
like nonsense, but when read aloud, sounds very familiar:

(The text for Ladle Rat Rotten Hut is taken from a longer work called The comic
looking-glass, by H. Chase.)

James Joyce used homophonic translation to transform languages and fragments of
languages, and to create his own brand of English from ordinary English:
"Are we speachin d'anglas landadge or are you sprakin sea Djoytsch?"
This madness has method in it. By using words that are between one
thing and another Joyce can make them mean two things at once, achieving the
simultaneity we spoke of on our
Literature
page. For example, the phrase: "they were yung and easily freudened" means 'young and easily
frightened,' but it also carries inescapable overtones of psychoanalysis. "Great Shapesphere"
means 'Shakespeare' but also 'the creator of the world' (and of the Globe!).

Something similar is achieved by writing using drawings of objects.
The objects' names, said aloud, reveal the word intended. In this rebus
letter by Lewis Carroll we see a picture of a deer and we understand
that Carroll means dear, but some flavor of the picture clings to
the word, giving it an extra dimension of meaning.

Playing with words . . .

Noun + 7 is wonderful game originated by the Oulipo group. The object of the game
is to replace each noun in a recognizeable phrase with the seventh noun
following it in the dictionary. In this way,

"To be or not to be, that is the question."
becomes
"To be or not to be, that is the quibble."

and

"In the beginning, God created the heaven and the
earth, and the earth was without form..."
becomes
"In the behavior Godunov created the Hebrides and
the easel, and the easel was without
Formica..."

Here is another example of how placement can be used to reinforce meaning,
also by Herbert.

Colossians 3:3
Our life is hid with Christ in God.

My words and thoughts do both express this notion,
That Life hath with the sun a double motion.
The first Is straight, and our diurnal friend,
The other Hid and doth obliquely bend.
One life is wrappedIn flesh, and tends to earth:
The other winds towards Him, whose happy birth
Taught me to live here so, That still one eye
Should aim and shoot at that whichIs on high:
Quitting with daily labour all
My pleasure,
To gain at harvest an eternal
Treasure.

Poems written in the shapes of things are called Concrete poems.
One of the most famous examples is the
Mouse's Tale from Lewis Carroll's Alice in wonderland. There is also
the extra homophonic play on the words tale and tail.
Concrete poetry came into its own in modern literature.
We have provided some further examples:
Light Circle, by Carlo Belloli, and
lilac, by Mary Ellen Solt.

This spiral letter written by Lewis Carroll to one of his young friends
has several subtle effects. In it he complains that she has been
behaving distantly towards him and that she does not care as much about
their correspondence as he does. The spiral lines seem to draw the reader
in toward the center - bringing her closer. In addition the page must be
maneuvered in order to read the letter. The reader must participate
in a much more active way than is usual.

Looking-glass writing . . .

Another kind of writing that demands audience participation is mirror
writing. To read it one must hold it up to a mirror or learn the
trick of deciphering it. Either way it takes concentrated
attention. Leonardo da Vinci did some beautiful mirror writing in his
notebooks
for privacy, and because he was fascinated with perspective and symmetry.